1)I don’t much like
the sound of my own voice but it is dismal to note how few free online audio
bibles are available so here’s one.

2)The
translation is that of the World English
Biblewhich is an update of the 1901
ASV. I disagree with a number of its textual andtranslation decisions and it seems to me that
in a number of places the English simply doesn’t make sense, but it has three
significant advantages:

a.it is public
domain so that non-commercial use is free;

b.it is related
to the ESV (itself a grandchild of the ASV) which means that it is easy
silently to read the ESV along with a WEB audio recording;

c.it is
“conservative” in the sense of being more “literal” or “wooden”.I’ve little understanding of the philosophies
of translation and I know that every term one cares to use is liable to
criticism, but most understand roughly what I mean by these words.

3)There are
lots of different ways that audio Bibles can be used.I have used an audio Bible alongside a
visual reading of the actual text – with a hard copy of the Bible in front of
me.That is why this reading is faster
than most audio Bibles – we can follow written words as they are spoken much
more quickly than spoken words with no text in front of us.The point of such an exercise is

a.it increases
the likelihood of properly attending to what the Scripture says since it is
coming in on two channels at once;

b.it provides a
discipline – one can decide to listen to / read a certain number of chapters /
minutes each day and the fact that this is, in part, on audio files makes it
easier to keep to one’s commitments.

4)While I have
provided files for individual chapters, the reading of the entire Bible takes
around 54 hours.In case it is of use to
anyone, I have produced a suggested reading schedule below which divides up the
readings into 56 units for those who want to plan their listening.

5)There are
various choices to be made in such an exercise. Here are mine:

a.Translation:World English Bible –
see above

b.Accent:­­English

c.Posh or
street:midway

d.Pace:fast but
could be faster

e.Error
tolerance: quite high –
there are lots of stumbles but few outright errors. I will correct the latter
as and when I find them.

6)If this is too
fast for people then Windows Media Player or AIMP2 and probably iTunes allow
for adjusting the playback speed. (For example, in Windows Media Player 11, go
to “Now Playing” then to “Enhancements” and then to “Play Speed Settings” and
you can make it a lot faster or a lot slower.)

7)There’s an
alternative to this reading – also free, online, complete, and World English
Bible. David Williams’ reading is at
http://www.audiotreasure.com .It’s
American accent, medium pace (70 hours) with very few errors indeed.

1)I don’t know
much about the techy side of things but this has been produced using a cheap
microphone, Audacity with free MP3 export thingy, and Windows Media
Player 11 for listening.Windows Media
Player 11 makes it easy to put these files on an MP3 player or to burn them as
either MP3 or audio CDs.

2)Total
cost:this has taken me around 200
hours, cost £9 for the microphone and whatever (small) charge it is to have it
up here on my site. How I wish that there were 100 free, online, complete audio
Bibles to choose from.It’s not that I
like mine or am proud of it but it’s of some use to me, it may be of some use
to someone else, and it may provoke (inspire or, more likely, irritate) others
into producing audio Bibles of their own.

In the table below I have arranged this
reading of the Bible into 56 blocks (“days”) of around 1 hour each. Rather
obviously, this makes for a reading of the whole Bible in two months at an hour
each day, in four months at 30 minutes each day, or in a year at 10 minutes
each day.